Check out the full paper for more on how mid-air haptics and #VR are helping us rethink multisensory integration.
Read the preprint on OSF: osf.io/preprints/ps...
#Neuroscience #Haptics #VirtualReality #OpenScience #UCL
We also found that Visual Dominance is incredibly strong.
Participants were consistently faster whenever the target was visual, regardless of the priming order. It seems our brains prioritize sight even when it contradicts our "ecological" expectations. (4/5)
The big finding: Touch is a "stable" anchor.
While vision is highly "malleable"—meaning it is easily influenced and speeded up by preceding stimuli—touch is significantly more resistant to these priming effects. (3/5)
Is there an "ecological expectation" to see an object before we touch it?
We hypothesized that Vision-then-Touch (VT) would be the fastest sequence because it's what we expect in the real world.
Turns out, we were wrong. (2/5)
Touch is "stable," but vision is "malleable." 🧵
We’re excited to share our new preprint: "Stable Touch and Malleable Vision: Differential Priming Magnitudes in Virtual Reality."
We used #VR and ultrasound mid-air haptics to challenge what we know about how we see and feel.
osf.io/preprints/ps...
We need to stop viewing VR as just a simulation and start using it as a critical tool for investigating the mechanisms of consciousness and disorders of reality.
Read the full paper here:
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
This explains why VR is so effective for PTSD exposure therapy . Even though you know it’s a simulation (doxastic knowledge), your predictive brain reacts physiologically as if the threat is real.
Presence is merely our reality mechanism at work.
The evidence is in the errors.
📉 When sensory inputs conflict in the real world (e.g., incongruent touch/vision), it induces "unreality" or dissociation—symptoms of Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder (DPDR).
The exact same mismatch breaks presence in VR.
We view this through the lens of Predictive Processing. The brain minimizes prediction errors between internal models and incoming sensory data .
When VR provides accurate sensorimotor contingencies, the brain processes it as "real" at the moment of perception.
In this paper, we propose that Presence and Reality are conceptually, mechanistically, and phenomenologically continuous .
Whether walking down a street or exploring a virtual world, your brain uses the same predictive architecture to construct "realness".
Historically, science has treated these as distinct:
1️⃣ Sense of Reality = Recognizing the physical world is real.
2️⃣ Sense of Presence = The feeling of "being there" in a virtual one.
We reviewed the literature and found definitions are inconsistent and overlapping.
Is the "Sense of Reality" in the physical world actually different from the "Sense of Presence" in VR? 🧠🥽
I’m thrilled to announce my first lead-author, theoretical paper is out now in Perspectives in Psychological Science!
We argue: No. Presence IS Reality.
A thread 🧵👇
Discrepancies Between Felt and Judged Presence: The Role of Touch on Presence in Virtual Reality: https://osf.io/v7fdc
Check out the full paper on PsyArXiv: osf.io/preprints/ps...
#Haptics #Neuroscience #OpenScience
We used mid-air haptics (ultrasound) to provide tactile feedback without physical contact.
This allowed us to test "Sense of Object Presence" (SOOP) in a naturalistic way, distinguishing between simple reaction time and metacognitive confidence.
The results showed a trade-off:
👁️ Vision: Faster reaction times. The dominant sense for immediate action.
✋ Touch: Slower, BUT rated as feeling significantly more "real" retrospectively.
Does Touch make VR feel more "real" than vision? 🖐️🥽
Our new preprint investigates the "Sense of Object Presence" using mid-air haptics. We found a fascinating disconnect between "felt" presence (immediate action) and "judged" presence (reflection). 🧵👇
osf.io/preprints/ps...
This is what my AI colleagues should have been doing for long but instead they preferred to ride the hype wave
irisvanrooijcogsci.com/2023/01/14/s...
Not going to name names, but myself and a group of colleagues are part of what is meant to be an 'international' society. They haven't held a conference or symposium outside of the east coast of the US for the past three years, and none of us have felt comfortable enough to attend.
I am once again pitching my romantic comedy:
- two academics start dating
- discover they are each other's terrible reviewer
- hijinks ensue
Working title: Love is Double-Blind
Out now @mitpress.bsky.social: The Invisible Hand by @mattlongo.bsky.social - our hands shaped evolution, but their real power lies in the brain. 🧠✋ Longo blends anatomy, neuroscience, archaeology & more into a unified story of how we sense, move, and even think of our hands.
My neuroscience background would probably compel me to write something based on free-will and the various experimentation people have done to determine whether 'Tu dois' really is a fundamental, deterministic law of the universe.
Presence is Reality: Rethinking Virtual and Real-World Consciousness: https://osf.io/7qvwu
Taken further, this argument suggests that the perception of virtual worlds is not so different than the perception of the 'real' world, meaning that virtual environments are not mere simulation - they are reality at the moment of perception as far as the brain is concerned
If this is the case, then VR research provides a radical avenue by which researchers can investigate facets of perceptual consciousness, including psychiatric disorders involving reality perception such as DPDR
4/🧵
In this piece, we argue that mechanistically and conceptually, presence and reality are actually identical - relying on the same integrative theoretical models, psychophysical mechanisms and neural architecture.
3/🧵
'Presence' is a term used by researchers utilising VR methodologies to describe how present one feels within a virtual environment, whereas 'reality' used by researchers in cognitive science is a term used to describe our ability to discern real from false phenomena
2/🧵
🚨New preprint alert🚨
Presence is Reality: Rethinking Virtual and Real-World Consciousness
In which we argue that 'presence' as defined and discussed in the field of computer science, is mechanistically and conceptually identical to 'reality'
osf.io/preprints/ps...
1/🧵
1/3 New preprint alert! 🚨 doi.org/10.31219/osf...
Are you studying interoception in a developmental or parental context?
We introduce the Parental Interoception Questionnaire (PIQ), a new tool to assess how parents perceive and respond to their child’s bodily signals.
Just got a cold call from an energy company which was a chatbot- but a remarkably nuanced one. First time I’ve interrupted a phone conversation to say (with genuine curiosity) “excuse me are you an AI?”
Reminds me of this from Dennett: www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...
